la la la la amer-i-ca
Jan. 3rd, 2022 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sideways• My Christmas treat to myself was the Mass Effect: Legendary trilogy - I made it about 2/3 through the second game before I had to put in on hold for travelling reasons. Always a nostalgic treat to return to this series, and I was relieved to find the updates weren't too intrusive and in fact made ME1 much less clunky. Did find myself a little disappointed by some of the face / hair changes; I always liked how 'plain' my Shepard looked, and now her hairstyle is unavoidably coiffed. A small price to be for being able to use the sniper rifle from the very beginning, I suppose.
• Nem recommended a lesser known Cherryh to me on the basis of our mutual love of bond animal companions, so 40,000 in Gehenna became my holiday read. My heart will always belong to the nighthorses, but Gehenna was a fascinating complement in terms of showing how a stranded human colony might become slowly drawn into the alien ecosystem it had recklessly sought to appropriate with the justification that no definably intelligent creatures existed there. The uneasy sense that we are witnessing the domestication of humans lingers, and like all good Cherryh books so too does the feeling that all the mysteries could be unravelled if the text would just give us the correct cipher... but of course it does not, because a lack of natural understanding is the point.
• A lot of reboots this year, but surprisingly quality ones! All Creatures Great & Small (2020) is the newest adaptation of the classic James Herriot stories, and I found it charming and gentle - perhaps a little too gentle, given the sadder stories and severer embarrassments tended to be either softened or wholly omitted. The cast were wonderful though, with a greater range of accents on display than in the original, and careful attention paid to the roles of Helen and Mrs Hall to balance out the otherwise fairly man-dominated array of characters. Highly recommended for anyone seeking some feel-good media featuring many scenic shots of rolling green hills and various cute critters.
• Dune (2021) made an impression and no mistake. Slow, solemn, and occasionally a little strangely paced - I had the sense that things went south within a day or two of the Atreides' arrival, which doesn't seem right - but the aesthetics were on point (the ornithopters!! the bagpipes??), I loved what they did with characters like Kynes, and they handled the strange back-and-forth of the precognition and the power of the voice well. Of course, the worms were the real standout. Superb. 10/10. Would feed them entire civilisations.
• West Side Story (also 2021) did what I have often wished more musical movies would do and made ample use of the fact that it is, in fact, a film and not merely filmed theatre. Can't comment on how it compares to the originals, which I haven't seen; can't comment on its portrayal of Puerto Ricans, which is outside my purview; can mournfully comment that "America" remains a devastatingly catchy song and the dancing was amazing.
• My fam also plunged through a random handful of easy family appeal flicks: Ron's Gone Wrong, Big Hero 6, Jungle Cruise. Nothing outstanding; nothing too awful.
• ...except Spider-Man: Far From Home, which I couldn't escape in time. Gyllenhaall seemed to have fun, at least. It otherwise felt like watching an extremely long tourism advert with perplexingly bad CGI.
• Nem recommended a lesser known Cherryh to me on the basis of our mutual love of bond animal companions, so 40,000 in Gehenna became my holiday read. My heart will always belong to the nighthorses, but Gehenna was a fascinating complement in terms of showing how a stranded human colony might become slowly drawn into the alien ecosystem it had recklessly sought to appropriate with the justification that no definably intelligent creatures existed there. The uneasy sense that we are witnessing the domestication of humans lingers, and like all good Cherryh books so too does the feeling that all the mysteries could be unravelled if the text would just give us the correct cipher... but of course it does not, because a lack of natural understanding is the point.
• A lot of reboots this year, but surprisingly quality ones! All Creatures Great & Small (2020) is the newest adaptation of the classic James Herriot stories, and I found it charming and gentle - perhaps a little too gentle, given the sadder stories and severer embarrassments tended to be either softened or wholly omitted. The cast were wonderful though, with a greater range of accents on display than in the original, and careful attention paid to the roles of Helen and Mrs Hall to balance out the otherwise fairly man-dominated array of characters. Highly recommended for anyone seeking some feel-good media featuring many scenic shots of rolling green hills and various cute critters.
• Dune (2021) made an impression and no mistake. Slow, solemn, and occasionally a little strangely paced - I had the sense that things went south within a day or two of the Atreides' arrival, which doesn't seem right - but the aesthetics were on point (the ornithopters!! the bagpipes??), I loved what they did with characters like Kynes, and they handled the strange back-and-forth of the precognition and the power of the voice well. Of course, the worms were the real standout. Superb. 10/10. Would feed them entire civilisations.
• West Side Story (also 2021) did what I have often wished more musical movies would do and made ample use of the fact that it is, in fact, a film and not merely filmed theatre. Can't comment on how it compares to the originals, which I haven't seen; can't comment on its portrayal of Puerto Ricans, which is outside my purview; can mournfully comment that "America" remains a devastatingly catchy song and the dancing was amazing.
• My fam also plunged through a random handful of easy family appeal flicks: Ron's Gone Wrong, Big Hero 6, Jungle Cruise. Nothing outstanding; nothing too awful.
• ...except Spider-Man: Far From Home, which I couldn't escape in time. Gyllenhaall seemed to have fun, at least. It otherwise felt like watching an extremely long tourism advert with perplexingly bad CGI.
